Real Life Wednesday: I’m So Over You, Winter.

Can we talk about how I feel like I’m reading War and Peace here? This book is GIANT. So thick and fat. I love it. All 700 pages of it.

And I’m really enjoying goodreads and glad you all talked me into joining. Except I get sucked in and just spend hours on there reading reviews. I’m trying to get my ducks in a row and review all the books I’ve rated so far, but this little thing called real work is getting in the way. Screw that. I promise I’ll get it together soon.

I’m probably wording that incorrectly because I’m not necessarily a magazine hoarder anymore. I used to be – like from the time I was sixteen or so. I just LOVE magazines. I wouldn’t ever want to throw any away. I learned my lesson, however, and now I pitch them every month or two. Magazine reading is one of my guilty pleasures, an activity that is totally mind numbing for me. But I also use them for inspiration. I always get asked for suggestions, so below are my go-to reads.

My absolute two favorites are Donna Hay and Delicious. I’ve been getting these for over a year now, after one of my friends shared that she would use them for photo inspiration. The photography is INSANE. So, so, so fabulous. I can’t even take it. The recipes are to die for too – since these are Australian magazines, our seasons are swapped. So I do keep many of these magazines on hand and revisit the “winter” editions in summer. Love these SO much.

If you follow me on instagram you might remember last year when I shared a pic of my food photo inspiration wall. All that includes is a blank wall… some tape… and photos you like. I use mostly photos from these magazines. It’s the only way I know how to grow my photography. Aside from throwing my camera out a window, because that’s what I’d like to do 98% of the time.

Like most food obsessed people, I also adore Bon Appetit and Food and Wine. I get many dinner ideas from those magazines and like the above, photo inspiration too.

More often than not though, I kind of want to flip through magazines that are NOT food related. A large chunk of my life revolves around food so in order to decompress, I like getting lost in In Style, People Style Watch, Real Simple, Elle Decor and W. And of course I love O magazine and Martha Stewart Living. I’m a marketer’s dream!

I’m super curious about magazines you love. I used most of these to form my vision board, but that doesn’t really matter considering most of what I cut out is words.

Before I go, I must share my local food extravaganza from last week.

Started on Thursday at Grit and Grace, which was so, so good and I can’t wait to get back. Three of us ordered four dishes and shared them all: the crispy pig face (pictured above), the braised beef short ribs, the grilled chicken thighs and the seared flap steak. GAH. If you look at the menu you can see what all came along with those dishes and we cleaned our darn plates. Totally delicious.

On Friday, my BFF and I had pizza (the one I showed yesterday) from il pizzaiolo after our little spa day. I’m pretty sure pizza is not what the world has in mind after a facial/massage/etc, but ummm it was perfect. And super fresh. You know.

More pizza Saturday! Just a last minute decision. This is the brussels, pancetta and burrata pizza I mentioned yesterday from piccolo forno. Insanity. Kill me now.

And just when I thought I was never going to wake up from a food coma, Eddie brought home some little donuts on Sunday morning. They were still warm.

I’m really wishing every week of mine could look like this food wise. Can that be a real thing?

65 comments

Donna Hay is a goodess! I need to make a wall of food photography inspiration. What an awesome idea!

The best magazine in my opinion for women of all ages is Bust. Have you read it? Everyone I have ever introduced it to (from my best friend to my mother, who passed them out to HER best friends) has loved it. It’s not pushy feminist with DIY and the usual fashion/music/book/movie reviews. It’s my largest magazine collection by FAR.

I am a magazine hoarder too, much to my husband’s dismay :). I have LOVED magazines since I was a pre-teen, reading Seventeen when I was only thirteen.
I am working on going through them more frequently, cutting out what inspires me, and recycling the rest. Which is great….except then I end up with a bunch of piles of ripped out magazine pages. I haven’t figured out an effective filling system yet.
Of course, I love Bon Appetit and Cooking Light for food inspiration. I only flip through Delicious and Donna Hay when I make it to B&N but I should buy some issues I think. I love women’s health/fitness magazines too, including Women’s Health, Fitness, Shape, Self. And for beauty/fashion….Glamour, InStyle, Elle. (no I don’t subscribe to all of these ha ha).
Magazines are great for inspiration and unlike books, it’s OK if you rip out the pages! I keep telling myself I’m going to make my own vision board. Time to stop procrastinating and just do it.
By the way…I love your “Real Life Wednesday” posts….quite possibly becoming my favorite feature on your site I think! :)

I don’t have Donna Hay, but my parents will bring back a Delicious (UK version) every time they go to England–and I love it SO much. The recipes are so creative and you’re right, the photography is amazing. I also love Saveur too for photography inspiration. And I just started getting Lucky Peach at Christmas–it’s sort of a funky, hipster quarterly food magazine. Not great for photography, but the articles are pretty interesting and different and they have really out-there recipes too.

i LOVE lucky peach!! Eddie got me a subscription two Christmases ago and it’s awesome. But yes… not as visual. I do love reading it though.

Dude, I was going to mention Lucky Peach too! I love it – the street food issue looks awesome. Donna Hay is ridiculously beautiful. I especially love it because I too am Australian. So she and I are basically twins. I’ve been looking at getting a subscription to Bon Appetit as well, but we don’t get them here, so I can’t go and check one out. What do you think? Any good?

Why is it that I have spent my entire life in the city that everyone dreams to go to (NYC) and where the supposedly best restaurants are in the US, but you make Pittsburgh restaurants look so much more delicious? Seriously, I get jealous every time you post a picture of food you eat. This is me regretting never sticking with my boyfriend from when I was 18 who was from Pittsburgh… he actually was horrible, but the food may have been worth it…

Those are our favorite pizza places too! Please share where you get delicious donuts in Pittsburgh!

peace love and little donuts in the strip!

This is the February winter blahs, your on the right track,time to get out your books and read. I iron and sort through things for Brimfield and start getting ready for the May show.
Where did you get the colored pencils? My 8 yo wants them for her “wreck this book”.

How did you learn about those Australian magazines? I’d never even heard of them!
For me – InStyle is a favorite. I also really like Health.

I read Wired magazine – I’m not a super nerd but I find the articles so interesting! And it’s not all techy – like they had a great article on the science of Olympic training and another on GM foods. Very informative and well written. It’s more a reading magazine and less a skim-through magazine.

I did the same thing :)

you guys will love it!

Yessssss. I love being a bad influence!

Well, this post answered my pizza question from Tuesday Things. I’m heading to Il Pizzaiolo downtown for lunch today so….pizza! I am going to have to head to Piccolo Forno for that burrata & Brussels pizza. I haven’t been there in a while.

Magazines: I’ve been a 12+ year subscriber to New York Magazine, even though I live in Pittsburgh. I can’t live without it at this point. I also subscribe to: Vogue, W, AFAR, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, Saveur, Food & Wine and I read my husband’s GQ and SKI when they arrive too. I buy Martha at the news stand on occasion. Um, are we kindred spirits because I totally get magazines being guilty pleasures. They make me so happy.

I dunno! I’d take a Donut King cinnamon donut over a Krispy Kreme style donut anyday!

I’m a huge goodreads (and magazine, pizza, and donut) fan. I’m currently reading Life and Life by Kate Atkinson and I highly recommend it. I believe it topped a lot of best of 2013 lists… I can definitely see why.

Lovin’ the pencils! I’m obsessed with office supplies too. I have soo many colored pens I always use :)

Confessed magazine lover here too. And I do still hoard them unfortunately! I just wrote a blog post chatting about my favorites a week or so ago, but I definitely love Oxygen, M&F Hers and FitnessRx for exercise… I know you have a soft spot too for fitness! And surprisingly Redbook is great for fashion, beauty, lifestyle. HGTV for home decor is good. I am drawn to making comfort foods so I love Taste of Home. People StyleWatch is the BEST for fashion/beauty! My fave.

P.S. even here in Florida I am sooo over winter!!!

I just sent a mass text to my friends who live in Pittsburgh basically begging them to go out to dinner to one of those places with me tonight. I am angry with myself that I have not tried Grit & Grace yet.

My husband and I just moved from Pittsburgh and can I just say that the BEST pizza we have had outside of Italy was at Piccolo Forno!!!!

yes so good!

I had an obsession with magazines that one year I decided to give up buying them for a year! Growing up, my library had this thing like twice a year where they would purge a load of old magazines. One time I came home with 60, and I am not exaggerating. I modpodged an old vanity with bright and colorful pictures.

Instead of throwing them you can always see if your library wants them [my library now sells them for 10 cents] or donate them to schools. I get magazines given to me because people know I like them and I currently have TONNNNSSS.

Hello fellow magazine hoarder! I don’t know what it is about them, but I’ve saved my magazines for as long as I can remember!

House Beautiful is my favorite magazine!

Il Pizzaiolo is my favorite — their mozzarella balls are amazing. and that pizza. yum.

I didn’t love Grit and grace when we went but maybe because I ordered wrong — the pig face looks awesome. Maybe we should go back….

For magazines, I read the typicals, but i really love Southern Living for recipes and pretty house pictures .(I live in Pittsburgh but I figure we are not too far from the Mason Dixon Line…) I also get Entertainment weekly, which is like the thinking person’s people magazine. It’s helped me improve my TV watching by 100%.

You should read Donna Tartt’s first book, The Secret History! It’s so good, too. I loved Goldfinch, one of my top books last year.

Still pushing The Opportunist by Tarryn Fisher :)

Magazine lovers unite! My husband has tried to convince me to only get digital editions, but it is soooo not the same. I need the glossy pages. I need the folding down of corners and ripping out pages. A screen can never replace that! I have gotten several different foodie magazines over the past few years, and honestly, I actually love Rachael Ray’s magazine. I know she’s kind of a love her or hate her figure in the foodie community, but I find her stuff really approachable and easily adaptable. I definitely want to add some of the other magazines to my list though. I could REALLY use the photography inspiration!

Ugh isn’t The Goldfinch the BEST? Have you read The Secret History too? Favourite book

<3 Those donuts!!!!

Julia

I love the photography in Donna Hay and Delicious, but often find the recipes are a bit fancy for me. My favourite Aussie magazines are Super Food Ideas and Recipes +. They both have great everyday recipes and are really good value for money (though probably not if they’re being imported to the US!).

What on earth is pig face.
You should see my face right now.

How funny to see last month’s Donna on the top of your magazine pile! You’d love Cuisine and Dish, too. Both of these are from NZ and they’re stunning. Delicious and Cuisine are my all-time favourites. OMG, those donuts! Genuinely good yeasted, glazed donuts are virtually non-existent in Australia & NZ. I’m dying a little inside just looking at the photo.

Magazines are my homies. I’m so glad you posted about this! I used to use a service called MagHound which was super cost-effective, but I think it was TOO good because now it’s gone.
Subscribe: Glamour, InStyle, Real Simple, HGTV, Martha, Southern Living (even though I’m in MI I should have been a belle), and my #1 fave – Entertainment Weekly. So so so good.
Off the rack: Rachael Ray, Food Network, Cooking Light, ELLE, Budget Travel, Hour Detroit, Better Homes, and Coastal Living. I read my husband’s GQ and ESPN more than he does. And you’ve all convinced me to go for The Goldfinch – thanks!

Dude…. 5 dishes, steam buns 4 life.

Loving this new series. I can’t seem to find time to read more. You have certainly inspired me to. I am a total magazine hoarder myself. I thing i have a stack of 100 or so. Thanks for the suggestions on new magazines.

The Goldfinch is one of the best books I’ve read recently, definitely the best one I read last year apart from Gone Girl. It’s right up there with The Secret History. Truly enjoyable book.

My favorite magazine is Mingle. I love it! No recipes, but dreamy party pictures, it’s quarterly.

Have you read Serena, by Ron Rash? It’s a drama/mystery/yadayadayada and I’ve heard great things about it. I think it’s being made into a movie in the next year or two, so I’m hoping to get my hands on it before then so it doesn’t get spoiled!